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Keep Squalene Out of Swine Flu Vaccine
Both Novartis and GlaxoSmithKline, two of the biggest producers or swine flu vaccines have acknowledged that their vaccines contain squalene, a product harvested from the livers of deep water Shark species. While these vaccines may help save some people, they are absolutely disastrous for Shark populations, especially for Gulper Sharks, a deep water species that is most prized for the quality of its liver. Gulper Sharks are listed as vulnerable on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's (ICUN) Red List of Threatened Species.
Why squalene? There is some evidence that it may boost the body's immune response. True or not, squalene is also present from plant sources like olive oil, wheat germ oil, and bran oil. As of right this second it is simply more convenient for companies like Novartis and Glaxo to source squalene from commercial fishing operations. This is not so convenient for the Gulper Shark a species that reproduces so slowly it takes a female Gulper 12 to 15 years to become sexually active, and after a two-year gestation period, it gives birth to a single pup. This means that the loss of a single breeding female can have devastating effects to an entire population of Sharks.
Luckily, the squalene-laced vaccines have not been approved for use in the U.S. yet. They are being used in Europe and Canada. Unfortunately, squalene is one of the active ingredients in many cosmetics including perennial favorite, Preparation H.
Go to Shark Safe Network to find out what you can do to help.
--Sharky
3 comments
According to the best research available and a recent study by Johns Hopkins an average person secretes 125 – 475 milligrams of squalene per day from their skin.
The question is - how many shark livers do you need to produce just 5 milligrams of squalene?
Granted we're talking millions of doses. But does anyone have hard numbers of sharks caught for squalene or is this another "save the" campaign without data?
Could the efforts be best used elsewhere?
60 Minutes reports that for the US alone "Last summer, the government said there would be 120 million doses of vaccine by fall; weeks later, it revised that to 40 million. Now, just over 17 million have shipped - 14 percent of the first estimate." This does not include the WHO's ambitious plans to provide worldwide vaccinations. This plan was summarily shot down In January 2010 when Wolfgang Wodarg, a Social Democrat deputy who trained as a doctor and now chairs the health committee at the Council of Europe, claimed major firms organised a "campaign of panic" to put pressure on the World Health Organisation (WHO) to declare a "false pandemic" to sell vaccines. Dr Wodarg said the WHO’s “false pandemic” flu campaign is “one of the greatest medicine scandals of the century.” Just to make the point of how unnecessary the demand for this component/additive to H1N1 vaccines is, apparently many nations Surgeon Generals didn't get the memo and journos are too busy covering Kanye West, Mariah Carey and Britney Spears' public declines to give a shit. It doesn't sell 'copy' like a good publicly famous 'car crash' in this day and age.
Sharks of the family Squalidae are pan-temperate in distribution which places them within easy grasp of the world's most efficient fisheries (read most destructive). The numbers of these Squalid sharks, once of greatest worldwide abundance, are already in massive decline from overexploitation for shark-fin soup (China's economic rise has hugely increased demand for this 'supposed' medicinal dish and will not abate in the foreseeable future), as a major source of filets for fish & chips especially in England & France (where it is considered a tradition to have fish on Friday in order to recognize Catholic rites, reg. some shit about Jesus, loaves and fish), as fertilizer (as a major fisheries bycatch for other targeted species, they are simply ground up and added to impoverished poorly-managed soils), as liver oils (a cheap additive for a huge variety of products ranging from cosmetics to medicines), and for pet food (again a desperate use for a major bycatch). On top of this huge and increasing demand on the Squalidae fisheries, they have the longest gestation period of any vertebrate species on this planet (22 to 24 months) are extremely slow to mature and as a fishery must be managed carefully. This reproductive strategy is called a K-Strategist in ecological parlance and is accompanied by such luminary species as the Calfornia Condor whose plight you may be familiar with not to even go into their hugely important ecological role in all temperate seas. In 2001 in the US, the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) voted to extend an emergency action that closed state waters to fishing for the vulnerable spiny dogfish, previously the most common and currently the most exploited member of the Squalidae family of sharks. The National Marine Fisheries Service predicting the collapse of the spiny dogfish population, closed federal waters to dogfish fishing in July 2003. The spiny dogfish is currently considered as "Vulnerable" by the World Conservation Union (IUCN) due to intense fishing pressure.
I'm a bit miffed that you can make an excellent case for the unnecessary addition of Squalene as a additive in H1N1 vaccines, not to mention that 2,6,10,15,19,23‐hexamethyl‐2,6,10,14,18,22‐tetracosahexaene aka Squalene - a colorless unsaturated aliphatic hydrocarbon - has questionable medical efficacy as an intermediate metabolite in the biogenesis of all steroids and triterpenoids and is naturally produced in high concentrations in the human sebum, but then proceed to question whether this would have any appreciable effects over the standing stocks of species of the family Squalidae. Are you a Republican lobbyist, nattering naysayer of negativity or simply incapable of connecting the proverbial ecological dots???
It ain't rocket science!!!
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